Maulik Pancholy is engaged! Maulik recently got engaged to his partner of nine years, Ryan Corvaia, the founder and owner of DishFoodNYC.com. They got engaged at the Taj Mahal, which is, of course, a monument built to commemorate love. What a great place to get engaged! Congratulations, guys! (Twitter)

Devyani Khobragade goes home. The diplomat at the center of the recent visa fraud scandal has returned to India. In a deal apparently meant to restore diplomatic ties with India, the United States government has granted full immunity to Khobragade, which the Indian government has refused to waive. Looks like Sangeeta Richard, her underpaid and overworked maid, isn’t getting the justice she deserves. According to the indictment, Devyani confiscated Richard’s passport and never returned it. The indictment also reveals that the diplomat worked Richards about 94 to 109 hours a week, with limited breaks for calls and meals. (New York Times)

Mindy gets nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Mindy Kaling was nominated for her work running and starring in The Mindy Project. She was honored in the category of Outstanding Comedy Series Actress. Mindy is the only Desi nominee for the awards this year. Other notable nominees include Nicole Beharie, Lupita Nyong’o, and Kerry Washington. (USA Today)

India’s athletes can’t walk under their flag. The Indian Olympic Association has goofed up, big time. The Association, which has recently been plagued with accusations of corruption, has, for some reason, planned a vote for new leadership to take place on February 9, two days after the Opening Ceremony! This means that Indian athletes have missed their chance to walk under the Indian flag, and will instead have to walk under a generic one, at the Sochi Winter Olympics. How embarrassing. (Time Magazine)

NRIs recruited to make phone calls for the BJP. There’s an election coming up in India, and the BJP, the party headed by Gujarat CM Narendra Modi, is determined to win it. NRIs are being asked by the Overseas Friends of the BJP to make calls to Indian friends and relatives, asking them to vote for Modi over the candidate that Congress is likely to field, Rahul Gandhi. Modi is best known for being accused of facilitating the 2002 pogrom against Muslim residents of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, that resulted in the deaths of over 2,000 Muslims. (India Today)

Jason Bateman uses anti-Indian slurs in new film. The Indo-American Leadership Confederation is taking offense at some of the language used in Jason Bateman’s latest film, Bad Words, of which he is director and star. At one point in the film’s trailer, Bateman adresses an Indian-American kid (played by Rohan Chand of Homeland) by saying “Hey Slumdog,” and later uses the phrase “curry hole.” The Confederation is asking that Bateman issue an apology, and wants the offending phrases removed from the film. (Hollywood.com)

Pakistani teenager dies while preventing a suicide bomber from entering his classroom. Pakistani teen Aitzaz Hasan, 17, is being praised today as a hero after he detained a suicide bomber and saved his classmates from a gruesome death. The hashtag #onemillionaitzazs has been trending in Pakistan, and hundreds of people attended Hasan’s funeral. Hasan was known for his anti-militant views, and often joked to his friends that he wanted to “catch a suicide bomber.” (CBC)

Jaya Sundaresh lives in Chandigarh, India. She grew up in various parts of the Northeast before deciding to study political science at McGill University. Follow her on Twitter at@anedumacation and read her thoughts on her personal blog.

2 Comments

The Jason Bateman film sounds like the main character is set up as kind of hate-able, sort of like Coach Sue on “Glee” or Pierce on “Community, who also freely use racial slurs precisely because they are supposed to be rude, insensitive people. (To a lesser extent, this also includes House on “House MD”.) So long as the character who talks this way is clearly positioned as “No one likes this person, s/he sucks” I don’t think it makes sense to get up in arms about realistically portraying how rude, insensitive people actually talk. Where such dialogue is truly problematic is if it’s coming out of the mouths of characters whom the audience is supposed to like and admire; e.g. if you had Tony Stark in “Iron Man” using slurs against Afghans.